


walk slow through the fire

by nxttime



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eventually u guys will see the Wilsons I promise, Gen, Mercenary Batfam AU, Mercenary Damian Wayne, Mercenary Dick Grayson, Mercenary Jason Todd, Mercenary Tim Drake, This is gonna be a bunch of one-shots i believe, or maybe an actual fic with a Plot, we'll see
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:42:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24499630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nxttime/pseuds/nxttime
Summary: Maybe the multiverse is real, he thought to himself, staring at the lights hanging above him like they were stars. And maybe in one of them I’m a hero.
Relationships: Damian Wayne & Joseph Wilson, Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson & Jason Todd, Dick Grayson & Slade Wilson, Dick Grayson & Tim Drake, Jason Todd & Grant Wilson, Tim Drake & Rose Wilson
Comments: 5
Kudos: 135





	walk slow through the fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [withthekeyisking](https://archiveofourown.org/users/withthekeyisking/gifts), [loosingletters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/loosingletters/gifts).



> Heyo! Guess who's back!!! It's me :3 and i have an au present for u all, even though i have many more to finish... 😅 let's pretend they're not there for just a sec.
> 
> Merc au! I hope u guys like! I'll be adding to this soon (hopefully!) and i'm very sorry if soon is in like... 2 months. I'm hoping a week at most. 
> 
> Anyways! Enjoy~

Dick walked down the alley, hood pulled over his head, hands in his pockets, lollipop poking out between his lips, gun holstered on his thigh. 

He hummed as he walked, ignoring the water that would splash on his shoe when he stepped in some of the countless puddles in the alley. 

After twenty minutes of walking through the winding and crossing back-alleys of Gotham City, Dick paused next to an abandoned building and craned his neck back to look up at a window several feet above him. It was closed, like it always is, and there were no possible ways of entering the building through it aside from rappelling from the roof.

Unless you’re Dick Grayson.

Spitting out the lollipop stick, Dick double-checked the holster at his hip to make sure the gun was secured, then looked back up at the window and rubbed his gloved hands together. 

“Up I go,” he mumbled. He walked a few steps back, then took a running start at the wall under the window, jumping up to kick off of it onto the wall of the brick building directly across from it, which he kicked off of with his other foot. He repeated the kick-off motion until he could reach the window. 

Once he was grabbing onto the windowsill, he let his legs dangle in the air for a few seconds, then leaned his arm completely on the small sill to free his other hand up to push the window open, then once it was open wide enough, he pulled himself inside the rest of the way and fell a few feet onto the walkway under the window. 

Smiling, he grabbed the pole resting against the wall they used to close the window whenever they came in through it.

After the window was closed, Dick set the pole back down, dug a hand into the pocket of his jeans, grabbed a lollipop, took the wrapper off, stuck it in his mouth, then turned to start walking down the walkway for his room.

Dick admired the holiday lights that were strung on the walls and hung off the exposed rafters of the high ceiling to the outwardly decrepit building, shining bright even though it was the middle of February, that he’d put up years ago when they first moved into the building. Gradually, as the years passed, and when they returned to the building for work or vacationing, he’d added more of different kinds. 

Now it looked like a teenager’s aesthetic dream. 

Tim walked out of his room, apparently reading a book in his hands, and started walking in the direction Dick was coming from. He paused three steps in and turned to face the railing, putting a finger in the book to keep his place as he closed it, then swinging himself over and to the main floor of the building with a “Welcome back, Dick,” as he did. When he hit the ground, he rolled once then stood and resumed reading his book as he walked to the kitchen area. 

Dick smiled and lifted a hand in a half-hearted salute to his brother, who wouldn’t have seen it even if he weren’t reading the book since the kitchen was perpendicular to Dick’s position.

Tim was smart, and incredibly so. His nose was always buried in a book. Whether it was about psychology or three teenagers taking a spaceship for a joyride through the galaxy together, Tim would read it. He had a sort of fascination with fictional stories, almost obsessing over the skill a writer must have to create an entire world for others to enjoy and play in; to create an entire _universe_ several thousands of people could visit whenever they wanted. He liked to balance his reading of fiction with his reading of education, though, buying—or stealing, whichever was most convenient—books about criminology and psychology whenever he had the chance to. 

Tim was as avid with his training as he was with his reading, spending hours in the training room with several different weapons and practicing different fighting styles. There were times where Tim was a normal young adult, early into his twenties—and, therefore, adulthood, though he’d technically been an adult since his third kill—when he would talk and ramble about a subject for hours or days. He could tell you three facts about disassembling a car’s engine in minutes without pausing to catch breath.

Killing people, for Tim, was just as impersonal as it was for Jason. They didn’t care about what they were doing. Tim was the youngest to be sent to complete field training, assigned to be instructed by Rose through it. He’d been groomed for this practice since early childhood. It made sense that he would be the youngest at nine years old. 

His choice in weapons mattered as much to Tim as it would to an elephant if you put a wide array of them before it. Ranged or not, Tim didn’t care. He would work with whatever he was provided, be it a pencil, a stapler, or a metal baseball. The job was in the end, just a job. Nothing more, and nothing less.

On the way to his room, Dick passed Jason’s. The door to his brother’s room was open, so Dick paused outside of it to poke his head inside to check on his brother.

Jason was in the middle of securing the straps of his uniform and raised a brow when he looked up and saw Dick standing there. 

“Back already?” he asked, returning his attention to his task and kneeling down on one knee to secure his boots. 

“Yep,” Dick replied casually, popping the ‘p’ as he spoke around the lollipop and leaned on the doorframe. “Going out so soon?”

Jason nodded, straightening and turning to his weapons drawer. 

“Yeah.” He selected two katanas, a handful of throwing knives, and a hunter’s blade, then tucked the weapons in their respective holsters strapped to his person. 

Dick took notice of the weapons type and inquired, “Political deal?”

Again Jason nodded. “Apparently, the dude paid a generous amount of cash for this to be done perfectly. It’s some judge’s… something, I don’t know, maybe a rival. He or she wants us to make sure that the kill isn’t traceable to them. I have to make it look personal, like someone in the guy’s inner circle did it.”

Humming, Dick nodded this time and left to let his little brother finish prepping for his assignment.

Jason was the one to go to if you needed a professional kill of a political or high-order business caliber. He could manage any kind of undercover op like he’d been raised in the environment he needed to infiltrate. If it was a crime organization deal, he almost _was_ raised in the environment. Really, they all were, Dick supposed.

Out of the three brothers, Jason was second youngest to be allowed out for training, having been only ten when he went out to begin field training with Grant. If asked, his brothers would tell you Jason had no styles or weapon of preference, but they knew otherwise. Jason’s favorite weapons were his sniper rifle, that he’d been customizing himself since he was thirteen, and his kris blade, that he’d been gifted at sixteen. 

He, like Tim, didn’t have any sort of personal preference for ranged or melee weapons. Their jobs were impersonal no matter the details of them. In the end, for Jason and Tim, they were just assignments. As far as they were concerned, there was nothing to hesitate over. They weren’t killing people. They were earning money.

It was a dangerous mentality for anyone to have, but it was a realistic one for their line of business. Get too involved in a job and it would be your downfall.

Stopping by Damian’s door, Dick decided to check in on his youngest brother and knocked on the teen’s door.

“Enter.”

Twisting the doorknob and opening the door, Dick walked into the room and sat in the chair to Damian’s desk, arms leaning on the back of it and chin resting on his folded arms.

“Welcome back, Richard.”

Damian was sitting cross-legged on his bed, swiping through whatever screens he was looking at on his tablet. On the nightstand beside the bed was a steaming bowl of noodles with chopsticks resting on the lip of the bowl. The food didn’t look touched, and Dick knew his little brother would continue to neglect the meal unless someone reminded him it was there.

“Thanks kiddo,” he said, reaching to move the lollipop in his mouth between his molars, then biting down hard until he felt it break. Dick continued to chew loudly on the lollipop until Damian huffed and shifted the tablet to an acceptable position in his lap, then reached blindly for the bowl of noodles until he grabbed it and brought it close to his chest.

Brow furrowed and eyes scanning the page his tablet was on, Damian started eating his food.

Satisfied, Dick nodded and stood, walking to the trash bin in Damian’s room and depositing the stick of the now-eaten lollipop into it. 

“Your task passed without hindrance?” Damian asked between bites. 

“It did,” Dick answered. He walked over to the bed to ruffle Damian’s hair—earning a half-hearted tsk—before heading to resume the walk for his room. 

Damian was a good kid. If he didn’t have his eyes glued to the tablet reading up on their past completed assignments, he was either on the phone with a friend or his contractor, or in the training room perfecting his strategies and further honing sharp skills. He had a few sketchbooks lying around, almost more than half of them filled with menial little nothings that he found interesting. Damian drew with an artistic skill that he translated over to his fighting style, almost surgical with the brushes and strokes of his swords.

Unlike Jason and Tim, who were both skilled with both guns and blades, Damian’s primary weapons were bladed ones. He had a double edged sword among a wide variety of other, much rarer blades. The weapons were far more personal than any gun could be, and those were the only kinds of jobs Damian did, even since he was twelve and first allowed out to begin field training with Joseph. 

Dick admired his brothers and their unique preferences. 

In the hall he saw Jason stepping out of his room, black domino secured to his face.

“You eat yet?” Dick asked, pausing.

Jason scoffed. “I’m the only one with normal eating habits here; ‘course I did, you dunce.”

Dick nodded and Jason jogged off to leave for his job.

Now that he’d checked on all three of his brothers, however briefly with Tim, Dick could go to his room and be at peace. 

Opening the door and stepping into his room, Dick looked around briefly to make sure it was empty before closing the door behind him and removing the gun at his thigh—the only weapon he’d chosen to take with him for the short and easy job of taking out some random street thugs. The assignment had taken five minutes to complete once Dick had arrived at the designated location. Normally it would be called embarrassingly quick, for seven gang members, but it was almost expected since it was Dick who had killed them—not that anyone but him, his brothers, his trainer, and his contractor would know it.

He deposited the gun on his dresser and began to change out of the casual street wear, dropping the clothes into the hamper by the bathroom door as he headed to take a shower and wash Gotham off of him.

Dick wasn’t as secure in his identity as a killer as his younger brothers were. If you asked Tim why, he’d tell you it was a psychological matter; a hesitation in him that he’d gotten from his eight years living with acrobats in the circus. They’d raised him to be a good man, a good person—had taught him good civilian values and morals.

But his time with them had been cut short by a man by the name of Tony Zucco. Maybe if he’d stayed with them into adulthood, Dick would’ve been different. He wouldn’t have gone down the route he had, would’ve stayed with Haly’s Circus and become a master acrobat there.

It just wasn’t how his story had played out, though.

His weapons of choice were all guns. Blades made kills personal in a way Dick could never handle. Guns were impersonal. You could kill someone from fifty feet away with a gun, you didn’t need to get up close and be a foot away from the victim.

Victim. Even the word he used to describe the people they killed humanized and personalized them. To his brothers, they weren’t victims, they were assignments. 

But in Dick’s grey-stained eyes, they were victims.

As the warm water washed his sin off in red rivulets, Dick closed his eyes to the blood, like he always did. He couldn’t watch the blood drip from his hands—which were only stained because he always dug the bullets out of any bodies they got caught in. He couldn’t answer the question of why he did it if he was asked honestly. He’d lie. It was just his job to now.

His shower ended fifteen minutes later, and Dick stared up at the ceiling, thinking about meaningless hypotheticals. Like how different his life would’ve been if he’d stayed with his parents, how different his life would be if Haly had paid the protection money, how different his life would be if he hadn’t been taken in by the men he had been.

_ Maybe the multiverse is real,  _ he thought to himself, staring at the lights hanging above him like they were stars.  _And maybe in one of them I’m a hero._

Two seconds later he scoffed at the idea.

His hands were made for killing.

_....but what if they weren’t? _

And what if fish were made for flying?


End file.
